I have spent the last few days at a School of Science Journalism in the pleasant town of Erice, in western Sicily. The school, held at the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture, brought together science communicators, freelance writers, magazine editors and press office consultants to listen to a small set of lectures, which this year (the fifth of the school) centered on the topic of "the digital world".

I contributed to the lessons with a 1-hour seminar titled "Science Blogging versus Science Journalism". I do not particularly like the title of my presentation, which was offered by the organizers, as I do not see the two activities in competition with each other much. Hence I tried to organize my lecture as a discussion of things that science journalist wannabes could be interested to hear, from a scientist who has been blogging for 10 years and has picked up some tricks and lessons along the way.

My audience was actually of higher level than what one could imagine for a "School": most of the participants have had a job in science journalism or related areas for a few years, and there is little that they do not know about the world of science blogging - a good part of them in fact do run blogs. But the feedback I got was quite positive, and suggests that the topics I covered were not off-target.

Below I am dumping a few of the slides of my talk, with minimal commentary. Feel free to comment on the content in the comments thread below - but please no more discussion on Lubos Motl here (see previous post)...

After a historical introduction of the blogging phenomenon, I discussed the reason that drives scientists to the medium... The slide above introduces the topic

Researchers also have reasons to avoid blogging... Above there's a short summary, but I didscussed the topic in more detail.

Some of the issues I dealt with are in the slide above.

Speaking to science journalists, I was wary to use comparatives... However, of course there are things that make the blog of a research scientist different from that of a science reporter.

Of course an advantage over printed matter is speed...

The slide above is my bottomline of this part of the talk... Science journalists might improve their blogs if they "stepped down" from the pedestal a bit more.

Then I discussed how large scientific collaborations feel threatened by the press, and how blogs have exacerbated this. I started by explaining how this scare of the press was originated by a 1993 article in the NYT.

Finally I discussed some tips that I picked up along the way in 10 years of blogging.

THe last part of my lecture discussed how to build analogies in the explanation of difficult scientific concepts. This is material I have already discussed here in the past, so maybe I will just add a link to it later...

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Comments

I have a different take on this. I think science blogs are important because scientists will fill a critical/skeptical gap that journalists in science no longer do. Collaborations shouldn't feel threatened by the bloggers because bloggers are the best defense against Higgs bosons leading to time travel and the other nonsense journalists produce.

When they don't get it wrong, journalists today often tend to want to defend science, which is not their job. This leads to an inability to ask the awkward questions of scientists, because they are fans rather than journalists.

Nothing makes me cringe more than when I see something like this from a journalist:

Doing a happy dance in my chair after receiving an email from a scientist complimenting me on an article on their instrument :) :)

This looks like it was a really good presentation. Nicely done. (No, I am not ironically writing you a fan letter in a comment, I have seen a lot of these, you know I would dump on it if I thought it was bad).

Thanks Hank. I agree with your point - there's some de-hyping to do these days, and research blogs should be the ones doing it. And yes, critical thinking should apply to articles about science, even if it is harder to have an opinion on a new resonance than on some new tax.

I have not done as much blogging as I might have, partly through the time it
consumes and partly because I have been trying to finish a book and progress it
to publication.

I have two problems that restrict my blogging, a tendency to research the topic
and endeavour to make it readable, with the language to my standard, which is,
essentially, a 1950s/1960s Grammar School, University standard of English.

Although I did not have to research my book as it is autobiographical, I
endeavoured to write it in my standard of English, which caused a minor problem
in that, Sylvie Lucas, my editor thought it ought to be more colloquial; I
compromised to some extent. The was also a major incident in London, at the
Healing Arts Exhibition, in the early 1990s, which was of such significance
that I considered inventing someone with whom to discuss it on the train on the
way home as a way of gong over all of the
details and ramifications. That clashed so much with my usual style I
rejected the idea almost as soon as it came to mind. As a result Sylvie
described the book MSS as reading like and engineering report, though I doubt
that she has ever read one of those herself. On the other hand she is correct
in that, despite much of the content being way beyond that which most of the
mainstreamers could even begin to get heir heads around, it is all written as
it happened, from contemporaneous notes, diary entries and, in a few cases,
audio recordings.

I endeavour to bring that level of precision to as much of that which I write
as I can manage. I also try to write in an even handed way, without too much
emotion. In that I am bearing in mind the writings, especially on the Internet,
blogs and social media in general, that descend in rants at varying levels, including
very low level ones.

You gave the reasons for scientists writing a blog as:

To express their own opinions and thoughts on things they are experts
To practice the art of writing, trying to get an audience
To be online, to become a source
To interact with others
To earn a reputation in the publishing world

I would agree with you on all of that. However, there are some people who
consider themselves expert, or at least more knowledgeable than other people,
when their knowledge and expertise is more by assumption than reality. There
are rather a large number of people who tend to “put themselves about” on an
“I’m a scientist” basis while not having the best understanding of science, or
realising that a scientist outside his/her specialisation is not really any
better than a layman. That is also where much of the strident and overbearing
language seems to come in; taking down to people and worse. I have never really
understood how such people expect to be taken seriously.

I was told of a rather useful assessment system during my early years in the
engineering profession; “The Three Whys”, about which I have written elsewhere.
A mark of a good engineer is to know what one does not know, the limits of ones
knowledge and experience; hence the need for a method of assessing the
reliability of information form other people without, necessarily, knowing much
about their specialist subject. A significant principle of that method of
assessment is that person being able to consistently present themselves and their
subject in a reasoned and reasonable way; any prevarication, lack of candour,
lack of even temper, let alone abuse, then it is best to forget them and go
elsewhere.

I would suggest that bearing such principles in mind would be appropriate for
good blogging. When I read a blog I bear the manner of presentation in mind and
start to discount it if it is not done in a reasonable manner. The main
culprits seem to be “mainstreamers” and the self-styled sceptics who take some
sort of strange delight in talking down to people but make themselves look
rather silly in the process. It is actually a breach of the scientists’ code of
conduct to fail to treat other people with respect, though recent events and
discussions with professional institutions have led me, along with fellow
engineers, to conclude that professional engineers take their responsibilities
in such matters somewhat more seriously than scientists.

There is a certain professor, now emeritus, who takes a blunt approach, to put
it charitably, and is frequently touted as an expert, though he is unwilling,
or unable, almost certainly the latter, to answer my questions and deletes my
comments from his blog, even though I pose such question in the even toned
manner described. On the other hand he co-authored a supposedly definitive book
which, on a general basis, I would not pass if it was submitted as a thesis,
would reject out of hand if considered at the engineering report level and
contains in excess of a dozen errors of fact and procedure within a single
page; so much for being an expert on the subject.

Your 5-line rule for layout is particular useful. I was already aware of the
need to break up a blog, ideally into headings, along with an additional
suggestion that an illustration, photograph, be included in the first
paragraph, that being, to a large extent, due to the advent of the Pinterest
website and giving people an excuse to link to that, though it is likely more
applicable to general blogs than science, or technical ones.

From the point of view of my book, I am aware of not just the advantage of the
artistic, illustrative side but the originality preference as well and in that
sense I am fortunate enough to have original artwork painted by a friend. So,
blogs about the book will, presumably, include the cover illustration(s).

I agree with your point on links; I always arrange for links, including those
on my websites, to open on a new page. On the other hand, I must be careful to
have more at the bottom of a piece, or at least bias them that way.

The threat of a “bad press” does not concern me at this stage of my career, in
fact the more publicity I get the closer I get to a new career; there is
actually a self-styled skeptic and significant blogger who is keen to help,
review the book and give me publicity, though he will no doubt do so in his
usual way, broadly the “yah boo sucks” level of discourse. His reason for doing
so is that I should be able to go back to university and be involved in
research, among other things, that will give him and his type plenty to moan
about for years to come; his reaction to the scenario I conveyed, proposed, via
Twitter, was “Bring it on”.

thank you for your comments and your perspective. May I ask you a favor ? I am looking for an agent for a book I have written. If you have a suggestion (it is a science popularization book) drop me a line at firstname.lastname@gmail.com (you find my first and last name above).